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fossil fuel divestment
Pope Francis: A Humble Advocate for Sharing the World's Resources
Again and again, Pope Francis railed against our collective indifference to widespread suffering and urged humanity, especially world leaders, to do better. It's not too late to heed his call.
Apr 23, 2025
Like millions of other people, I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Pope Francis, one of the most vocal and humble advocates for sharing the world’s resources.
Since assuming the throne of St Peter in 2013, the Pope championed many causes that are dear to progressive activists—from agroecology to post-growth economics, fossil fuel divestment, arms trade regulation and global monetary reform.
But at the heart of his advocacy was a focus on ending inequality both globally and on a national basis, repeatedly calling upon governments to redistribute wealth and benefits to the poor in a new spirit of generosity.
I first recall being struck by Pope Francis’ headline-grabbing speech in 2014, when he urged the United Nations to promote a ‘worldwide ethical mobilization’ of solidarity with the poor to help curb an ‘economy of exclusion’ that is taking hold everywhere today.
A year later in 2015, the papal encyclical Laudato Si’—subtitled ‘On care for our common home’—made bigger headlines around the world with its powerful critique of laissez-faire ideology and its destructive effects on the environment. The trenchant letter expounded on the responsibility of rich countries to address their ‘ecological debt’ to less developed countries, with an acknowledgement of ‘differentiated responsibilities’ in addressing climate change. It was a radical entreaty for resource transfers between the Global North and South, and significant reductions in the consumption of non-renewable energy within developed countries.
The eloquent discourse of Laudato Si’ also reflected the core understanding of many environmental activists—that the climate and inequality crises are inextricably interconnected. Again and again, Pope Francis railed against our collective indifference to widespread human suffering. He persistently argued that the welfare of nations is interrelated, so the massive poverty and hunger experienced in the fragile economies of developing nations is, in turn, reflected in the destruction of the natural environment. Hence the urgency of remediating the enormous discrepancies in living standards throughout the world, which calls for a sense of global solidarity and interdependency that is tragically lacking in human affairs.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Francis also set out the challenge for rich nations to cooperate and distribute the vaccine freely to the world, rather than hoarding resources and treating one’s own nation first. The 2020 encyclical titled Fratelli tutti—‘Brother’s all’—made clear that Covid-19 was exposing existing inequalities, and fraternity on a state level requires richer countries to help poorer ones if we are to give meaning to the equality of human rights. Clearly, the world failed to heed Pope Francis’ plea to ensure recovery from the crisis tackled poverty, inequality and the climate emergency by ‘sharing resources in a just and respectable manner’.
Another theme that Francis constantly returned to was the need for cancelling the debts of countries unable to repay them. In his final papal bull for the Jubilee Year 2025, titled Spes non confundit—‘Hope does not disappoint’—he described debt forgiveness as a matter of justice more than generosity, and again decried the true ecological debt that exists between the Global North and South.
Francis was rightly known as the ‘Pope of the peripheries,’ standing up for the most vulnerable and marginalized peoples. He made clear his opposition to Western government policies of battening down the hatches and draconian responses to international migrants. Soon after taking office, Francis visited the Italian island of Lampedusa where he condemned European ‘indifference’ to the drowning of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in small boats. He later visited numerous camps for excluded migrants and refugees living ‘ghost lives in limbo,’ calling upon us to see Christ in the stranger and outsider. This was a sharp rebuke to reactionary politicians like Trump, Meloni, and Orbán, instead emphasizing the need for ‘universal fraternity’ as influenced by St. Francis of Assisi, after whom the Pope took his name.
It was a fitting testament to Francis’ advocacy for the poor and forgotten that he died hours after calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In his annual Urbi et Orbi —‘To the City and World’—message on Easter Sunday, the day before he died, Francis repeated his appeal to the warring parties to "come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace." Few politicians, it seems, have followed the Pope's counsel throughout his 12-year-long pontificate. Which now leaves it up to us, the ordinary people of goodwill, to uphold Francis’ tireless advocacy and hope for a better world.
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Why Are California’s Public Pension Funds Still Gambling Workers’ Savings on Fossil Fuels?
CalPERS and CalSTRS—collectively representing $780 billion and 2.5 million members—must act on their fiduciary duty and responsibly phase out fossil fuel holdings.
Oct 18, 2023
As world governments descended on New York City for Climate Week last month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Governor Gavin Newsom brought a momentous announcement: Following a year of record climate disasters, the state is suing the five biggest fossil fuel companies for climate damages and deception.
In this crucial move to hold the perpetrators of wildfires, floods, smoke, and deadly heat accountable for the destruction they are wreaking in our communities, the state of California joins dozens of municipalities with similar damages and deception lawsuits against major oil companies.
As far back as the 1970s, companies like Exxon, Chevron, and Shell knew all there was to know about the dangers of fossil fuel use causing global climate change—the very disasters we’re living through now. Instead of warning the rest of us, or pivoting their business models, the likes of Chevron doubled down on fossil fuels, all in the name of profit while the rest of us pay the cost.
There’s no room for coal, oil, and gas in any climate-safe investments.
So why are California’s public pension funds—CalPERS and CalSTRS, the two largest in the country—still gambling workers’ hard-earned savings on fossil fuels?
As revealed in a DeSmog exclusive, data pulled by Stand.earth and the Climate Safe Pensions Network from the Bloomberg Terminal reveals that CalPERS and CalSTRS collectively hold around $4.5 billion in Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP, the five oil and gas corporations named as defendants in the lawsuit.
CalPERS and CalSTRS—collectively representing $780 billion and 2.5 million members—must act on their fiduciary duty and responsibly phase out fossil fuel holdings. There’s no room for coal, oil, and gas in any climate-safe investments.
That’s exactly what SB 252—California’s pension fossil fuel divestment bill—would achieve. The widely supported Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill, which passed the Senate in 2023, will head straight to the state Assembly in 2024.
To date, nearly 1,600 institutions representing over $40 trillion in assets have committed to fossil fuel divestment. In 2023 alone, new commitments came from the Church of England, New York University, and many more, after years of futile attempts to “engage with fossil fuel companies” and “help fossil fuel clients transition” failed.
Following the announcement of the lawsuit, Governor Newsom officially signed SB 253 and SB 261 into law—two of the three bills in California’s Climate Accountability Package (the third being SB 252). SB 253, the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, will require U.S.-based corporations doing business in California that make over $1 billion annually to publicly disclose their carbon footprint. SB 261, the Climate-Related Financial Risk Act, will require corporations, financial institutions, and insurers to report on climate-related financial risk.
As Governor Newsom said himself:
California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for billions of dollars in damages—wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells. With this lawsuit, California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable and deliver the justice our people deserve.
It’s time to bring the full Climate Accountability Package over the finish line, and pass SB 252 in 2024.
This is not only about divesting from fossil-fueled chaos, this is about correcting the course of California’s public pensions and aligning them with California’s climate-safe future: a future that includes renewable energy, Indigenous ecological leadership, affordable housing, and accessible healthcare and public transit for all. We have the opportunity to build a California where all of us can thrive.
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Why Fossil Fuel Divestment Works
Divestment is the start of a process of reducing the tremendous influence of the fossil fuel industry on our political system and thereby making it possible to win government action on climate change.
Jul 09, 2023
There is much debate about what fossil fuel divestment accomplishes. Some critics say it sounds good but accomplishes very little. They look at the economics and correctly conclude that divestment does not financially hurt fossil companies. However, these critics miss the political impact of divestment.
The goals of fossil fuel divestment are twofold. First, is to raise public awareness of climate change and the responsibility of fossil companies. Second, is to stigmatize or delegitimize the fossil fuel industry by calling them out as bad actors, weakening them politically, and thereby helping win government action on climate change. The University of Oxford Stranded Assets Program studied a number of divestment movements and concluded that almost all had been successful in ultimately winning restrictive legislation against their targeted industries.
Divestment is the start of a process of reducing the tremendous influence of the fossil fuel industry on our political system and thereby making it possible to win government action on climate change. Think about how the tobacco divestment movement made it unacceptable for politicians to take their campaign contributions and that in turn made it possible for the first time to pass public health legislation aimed at reducing smoking.
We are slowly starting to see delegitimization happen with fossil fuels.
Think about how the divestment movement from South African Apartheid in the 1980s made Apartheid unacceptable. And this in a country that has long turned a blind eye to racial oppression at home and oppression by U.S. supported regimes around the world. Twenty-six states, 22 counties, and over 90 cities took some form of divestment action against companies doing business in South Africa. As a result, the divestment movement had great power to shape public opinion and sway politicians. In 1986, Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which banned new U.S. investment in South Africa, and sales to the police and military. President Ronald Reagan vetoed the act, but the Republican-controlled Senate overrode the veto. That was the power of the divestment movement.
We are slowly starting to see delegitimization happen with fossil fuels. Nationwide over 3,700 politicians have signed a pledge not to take campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, including most notably President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The California Democratic Party recently voted not to accept fossil fuel money. In 2018, the Democratic National Committee did the same thing, but then quickly reversed course under pressure from some sectors of organized labor.
Economics versus Politics
Although divestment involves stocks and investments, the effects of divestment are political rather than directly financial. Research to date indicates that at best divestment announcements may have small, very short-term impacts on companies’ stock prices. There is no research showing that divestment directly financially harms fossil fuel companies or changes their behavior. Three economists won the Nobel Prize for their work showing that the massive anti-apartheid divestments had no effects on the share prices of targeted companies. Even the Oxford report on divestment movements, which finds strong political effects of divestment, recommends divestment campaigners “understand that the direct impacts are likely to be minimal.”
Of course, government action promoting clean energy and restricting fossil fuel projects, and possibly reduced bank financing will ultimately greatly harm fossil fuel companies, but this will come about due to the political effects of divestment, rather than direct financial impacts.
Even if divestment did financially harm companies that would be woefully inadequate to address climate change. We cannot wait for economic pressure to make new fossil fuel projects unprofitable—governments can stop permitting new projects now. We need government incentives and mandates for building electrification and electric vehicle use. To grow clean energy requires government tax credits, subsidies, and renewable portfolio standards. It will take government policies to ensure all this happens in a just and equitable way. We need government action on many fronts, and divestment can helps us win that action against fierce fossil fuel industry opposition.
Implications for the Divestment Movement
Whether the effects of divestment are political or financial affects the divestment movement in a number of ways.
Publicity and Messaging: For politics-focused divestment activists publicity and messaging are key. They want as many people as possible to know about a divestment demand or actual divestment action, and they want the message to be that divestment was done because of the immorality and responsibility of the fossil fuel industry with regard to climate change. If the message is instead that divestment is a smart financial move (which it is) that is not as powerful an outcome as it contributes less to delegitimizing the fossil fuel industry.
Politics-focused activists still need to use financial arguments to convince decision makers to divest and, in the case of pension funds, convince pensioners that they will not be hurt. But in a thoughtful paper, Daniel Apfel warns that too much focus on financial arguments distracts from moral arguments and may “...come into conflict with raising awareness of the destruction of frontline communities from fossil fuel extraction and effects of climate change.” It is also important that stigmatization be focused on fossil fuel companies not the institutions doing the investing, whether that be pension funds or universities.
For politics-focused divestment activists, divestment is a means to winning government action on climate change. Divestment in of itself is not the end.
What Gets Divested and Timeframe: Finance-focused activists often advocate for divestment not just from fossil fuel producers, but from a broad array of related industries such as equipment manufacturers, pipeline companies, and fossil fuel powered electric utilities. And they often want divestment to occur in as short a timeframe as possible and include not just fossil fuel stocks and bonds but also index funds that contain any fossil fuels and private equity. For politics-focused divestment activists a broad divestment demand is viewed as not as important as it does not affect the political impact of divestment. Strategically, a very broad divestment demand will be harder to win than a narrower demand, and it is the victory that most achieves the publicity and delegitimization goals of divestment.
Building a Movement: For politics-focused divestment activists, divestment is a means to winning government action on climate change. Divestment in of itself is not the end. Therefore, it is important to create a broad movement fighting on climate change issues that will build on divestment wins and push for government action on climate. For finance-focused divestment activists, divestment is seen as directly impacting fossil fuel companies, so there is less of a need to focus on winning government action or on building a broad movement.
Fortunately, despite differences in views about what divestment accomplishes, activists of different views are successfully collaborating in building a global fossil fuel divestment movement. To date almost 1,600 organizations have divested, with combined holdings of over $40 trillion.
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